My Story(6 sections)
MY STORY
This is 2 year-year-old me, prepared for a day of riding my trusty steed, roaming southwest Iowa.
Our family of five lived in a 2-bedroom house at the time, on a 10 acre piece of land.
Dad was a county road employee who drove a gravel truck.
Mom was a home maker who gardened, canned food etc.
I was raised with two older sisters.
Both sets of my grandparents lived in the nearly town of 700 people.
MY STORY
Childhood
This is one of the two churches I went to as a kid.
My mom believed I should have some religious training,
so I was taken to Sunday School, ages 5 through 14.
I learned stuff about God and Jesus that I didn't learn at home.
And unlike regular school, there wasn't a lot of homework.
I mostly enjoyed Sunday School.
I learned about a God that couldn't be seen, but still existed.
And that Jesus was God's representative on Earth for awhile,
and then went back to heaven.
I'm sure I was taught a bunch of other things too, but I was quite a dingbat as a child.
I quit going to Sunday School at 15, when I was released from the assignment
because as a 15-year-old, I wanted to do other things on Sundays.
MY STORY
Young adulthood
I became a legal adult in 1973 and aspired to be a studmuffin millionaire,
But being from a blue-collar family, college wasn't an automatic option.
(And I didn't like homework)
I went through my 20s, gradually learning several job skills,
which helped me get better jobs, where I could provide for myself alright.
And I made a point of enjoying life to the limits of my bravery,
with cars, alcohol and girls, etc.
I didn't have much courage with any of them, but I still did enough to know I was doing wrong.
The job I had, where 'the big event' happened, was in a mobile home factory in Colorado.
I was lead-man in the factory wood mill, where we cut the parts used to build the homes.
I tended to cheat OSHA and work without the safety devices that slowed me down.
MY STORY
'the event'
This is a picture of my hand 40+ years after the accident.
In 1980, I put the first two fingers of my right hand through the blades of the table saw I was using, because I wasn't paying attention and not using safety guards..
Half of my first finger was dangling from the rest of the finger by a patch of flesh that held the main artery and nerve. The cartilage in the joint of my second finger was cut halfway through.
The production manager bundled up my hand and drove me to the Emergency Room.
On the way, I had a silent conversation with God, trying to negotiate a way to keep my fingers.
I had heard about God healing people.
Also, my dad was a WW2 vet, so I had heard about wartime foxhole conversions...
but I didn't think that I could successfully give up my bad habits if God saved my fingers.
Finally, I silently said to God, "God, I know you heal people. Heal me just because you can."
I was able to keep both fingers, the 2nd finger is near perfect and the first finger is still there, so...
MY STORY
My conversion
I began watching some religious TV on Sundays.
A while after the accident, I moved back to Iowa and started to rebuild.
This included some Bible-reading, and quitting a 3-pack-a day smoking habit.
I guess God was drawing me, for I was in a nearby bigger city to purchase carpet for a house
I was working on - when I drove by a little storefront church, similar to the photo,
and felt drawn to attend.
So, on Sunday mornings, I would put my Bible in a paper bag, and carry it to my truck
(so no one would see me carrying a Bible), drive to that city and go to church.
It was at that church, that I learned about Jesus' role in the Holy Trinity;
that God is a 3-part being, and that Jesus is one of those parts.
It was then that Jesus hanging on the cross for my sins... made sense.
When I saw Jesus as a mere mortal, I didn't see how one mere mortal
could pay for the sins of another mere mortal (which is true).
So by understanding who Jesus really is, I could connect with the Holy Trinity.
Reading the Bible, I also understood that God is more powerful than I am,
and I would have to answer to Him one day, so I took Jesus' advice in Luke 14:
31Or what king on his way to war with another king will not first sit down and consider
whether he can engage with ten thousand men the one coming against him
with twenty thousand?
32And if he is unable, he will send a delegation while the other king is still far off,
to ask for terms of peace.
Any adult who is not born-again is at war with God.
I saw I was out-gunned, so I surrendered and 'got saved' in the fall of 1984.
Jesus and I have continued on from there.
While at first, my surrender was a strategic maneuver on my part, not a love story,
I am learning that God keeps His word and can be trusted.
Jesus and I are building something together.
1 Corinthians 2:
However, as it is written “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived
the things God has prepared for those who love him.
the things God has prepared for those who love him.
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his spirit."
Our Christmas photo, 2022
40 years later...
I met a girl (Penny) at that church and married her a few months later.
May, 2025 will be 40 years married.
Yes, we have been fruitful and multiplied.
Yes, there have been:
both good times and hard times
accomplishments and disappointments,
joys and griefs,
and yes, there are now aging issues.
But God is faithful.
